


Only the sum of memories

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As long as there is life, there will be new trails to walk, decisions to make, and consequences to live with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only the sum of memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Abbyromana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abbyromana/gifts).



> Written for [ann_blue](http://www.whofic.com/viewuser.php?uid=814) who won one of my [help_haiti](http://community.livejournal.com/help_haiti/) offers. Many thanks to her for both the donation and the awesome prompt.
> 
> * * *

  
_Like the ghost of a dear friend dead_  
Is Time long past.  
A tone which is now forever fled,  
A hope which is now forever past,  
A love so sweet it could not last,  
Was Time long past.

 _There were sweet dreams in the night_  
Of Time long past:  
And, was it sadness or delight,  
Each day a shadow onward cast  
Which made us wish it yet might last,  
That Time long past.

 _There is regret, almost remorse,_  
For Time long past.  
'Tis like a child's belovèd corse  
A father watches, till at last  
Beauty is like remembrance, cast  
From Time long past.

\- Time Long Past, Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 

When he looks up at the stars these days, Wilf doesn’t know quite what to think. His head is full of pictures, the memories of an old man. He remembers standing among those stars and looking down at the earth, so small, so easily lost. Blue blending into black blending into nothing.

Roles reverse, time shifts, and here he is, stuck again with his boots rooted to the humble soil of his garden plot, making prints to the dirt through the lean layers of frost. His heart is torn between might have beens, and could’ve beens, and what is.

He is an old man, with more behind him than ahead.

He knows his time is running thin.

It’s a chill night. Wilf rests on the bench which Donna’s husband installed for just that purpose. Wilf has been stern with his grand-daughter, telling her that he doesn’t want her dividing up her lottery winnings with him. That he has everything he desires (lies, always, but some things money can’t buy). Of course, his protests could never stop her from forcing little changes, tiny improvements.

Wilf grips his tea thermos and grudgingly admits that the bench is more comfortable than the little fold-up, three-legged stool he used to lug up the hill. One less thing to carry anyway. His telescope rests on its tripod a comfortable leaning distance away, pointed up and ready for viewing. Wilf’s old bones creak as he moves his face to the eyepiece. Even shielded by its rubber rim, the metal is cool against his skin. His eyelashes rustle against the lens when he blinks.

It’s still hard sometimes, looking at the sky and thinking of what has happened. Donna didn’t seem sad anymore, and, for that, Wilf is grateful, but he still feels the twist in his gut. The great and utter wrongness of it. He is happy to have his grand-daughter alive and well. He is happy with his new son-in-law. And then there is the grandchild he suspects might be on the way, even if there has been no confirmation yet. Donna’s coyness tells him everything — she never could keep a secret from him, that girl.

No, Wilfred Mott is pleased with life. It is good, better than it ever might have been.

But still, he wonders why he has the right to decide that. To look at what is and decide it best. Better. Right.

Even if it is. Isn’t. Might be.

Well, that’s what you got, he berates himself. He isn’t some Lord of Time, he can’t change things back or shift them around.

And even for those Lords, there are rules to follow and tolls to be paid.

The view through the telescope is very blurry and it takes Wilf a moment to realize he is crying. A rough wipe off his coat sleeve and he turns his eye back to the sky. To lost dreams and maybes. He isn’t sure if he is happy or heart-broken.

There is a flash.

No noise. Just a streak of white, bright light.

Wilf blinks, unsure if he’s seen anything. Or if it is just his old eyes acting up. Sylvia keeps nagging that he needs to wear his glasses. Maybe she’s right.

He stands, stretching, head tilted back, his spine going pop-pop-pop. Then he carefully wipes the snow from the telescope’s rounded back, folds it, attaches the carry-strap, and walks down the hill, to warmth.

 

*

 

There’s a girl standing on the street corner.

She doesn’t have a jacket — all she’s wearing is a ratty black top and stained jeans, the fabric of both pressed tight to her curves, several sizes too small — but she isn’t shivering. Her blonde hair glints silver with accumulated frost.

“Are you okay?” Wilf asks.

The girl looks young. Not over twenty, surely. She’s staring at the sky with a distant look. Not broken, just wondering. The shadows of a leafless oak make strange patterns across her face, shifting with the wind.

Wilfred hesitates. It’s a good neighbourhood this is. But you got tales on the news about young people gone mad with drugs; stabbings, violent murders — but this little slip of a girl. You got stories about other things too. Wilfred puts down his telescope and empty thermos. He takes his own thick coat off, ready to offer it.

“I asked, are you alright?”

He shambles up beside her, putting the coat over her shoulders before she can respond.

She blinks.

“Hello,” the girl says.

“Hello,” Wilf replies. His half-smile dies into gruffness, concern. “What are you doing about? It’s late you know. You should be getting home.”

“I don’t have a home,” the girl says. Her bright blue eyes aren’t sad over this.

“Then you ought to come back with me then,” Wilf says, thinking already of how Sylvia will react. But the stars are twinkling ice and the moon is reflecting across the pavement, sending silver streams to meet the street lamps.

“Won’t you be cold without your coat?” the girl asks.

“Still have my hat don’t I?” says Wilf. The stars pierce his heart and he almost laughs. “Besides, I’m tough as nails. An old soldier I am.”

“Oh,” says the girl, her smile bright against her winter-burned cheeks. “So am I.”

 

*

 

Sylvia isn’t home. There’s a note on the kitchen island. Old Mrs. Bernz from the next house over, her terrier jumped off the sofa back and broke its leg. She called Sylvia for a ride to the animal hospital since she’d given up her own license two years back. Cataracts.

Wilf directs his strange guest to the living room to sit comfortably while he puts the tea on.

“Is there anyone you’d like me to call?” he asks.

“No,” the girl says.

“What kind of tea would you prefer? There’s plain, earl grey, camomile, mint and vanilla… mind, Sylvia will probably be at me if I give you that. It’s her secret stash. I could make you cocoa if you like?”

The girl doesn’t answer. Wilf makes two mugs of plain tea with sugar and milk. He puts extra sugar in hers, to ward against the cold. He fixes a plate with a few sugar biscuits and a simple cheese sandwich — the girl will be hungry, he thinks.

He walks back to the living room with the steaming mugs in hand and the plate balanced against the crook of his arm. He realises that he’s let a stranger in and hasn’t been watching her. That she might’ve made off with half their valuables while he’s been doddering about. But he’s not worried for some reason.

And, when he reaches the living room, she’s still there, perched on the edge of the sofa. She’s got a photo frame in her hand, looking at it real close, but she puts it quickly back on the side table when she hears Wilf. Too quickly, it clatters and falls, picture hidden.

Wilf sets down the tea and food. Picks up the photo.

“It’s my grand-daughter,” he says. “On her wedding day.”

The girl looks at him.

“Why?” she asks.

“That’s a rather funny question,” says Wilf. “Why what?”

“Weddings are happy aren’t they?” she asks, like she’s interpreting a foreign language, trying to work out some alien code.

“I suppose they are,” says Wilf. He holds the picture at a length, looking at the laugh on his grand-daughter’s lips, the hope caught in the crowd of smiles, the nervous adoration of the groom.

“Then why is he so sad?”

“Who?” Wilf asks, suddenly on guard. The girl reaches over his arm to point to a person in the photo’s far background, a bundled of pixels, a blur, a brown pinstripe suit beside a tall blue box.

“Who are you?” Wilf asks. The girl is stiff on the sofa’s edge, eyeing the cheese sandwich Wilf made for her, arms crossed tight. She keeps scanning the room, Wilf notices, calculating strategies, exits, threats. Whoever she is, she didn’t lie about military training. One soldier always recognises another.

“Didn’t she tell you?” the girl asks, not making eye contact.

“If you’re here to hurt my grand-daughter, I won’t let you.”

The girl swings to look at him, pleading in her eyes.

“I’d never hurt Donna, never. She gave me my name. She gave me everything and taught me so much. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Jenny, just Jenny.”

 

*

 

Stories unfurl, time unwinds, beginnings end, reverse, start, stop. Wilfred listens to the girl’s story, to his grand-daughter’s story, to a dead man’s story. And he wonders again at the might have been maybes.

“She doesn’t remember anything?” Jenny asks, looking at the photo. Beside them, the tea has long since gone cold.

“She can’t,” says Wilf. “None of it. Never.”

“Is that why he’s so sad?” she asks.

Wilfred refuses to answer. In another room, a clock ticks unreasonably loud.

“He’s dead isn’t he?” asks Jenny.

Wilfred presses his lips together, closes his eyes. Opens them. Looks at the ceiling, but white stucco has no answers.

“Yes,” he says.

“I came so far,” says Jenny. She looks small against the cushions. “I searched half the universe, and I tried to be like him, to make him proud.”

Wilfred thinks of the stories she’s told him, of the hardships and trials, of triumphs and despairs, of small kindnesses and wars against evil. All set against a never ending quest to this end, this place, this small lonely living room in 21st century Chiswick. In his mind’s eye, Wilf sees a broken man in a torn suit, blood dripping across his face, storming and swearing against the dark. Because he knew, he must have known.

“He would be proud,” Wilf says, and it is as true as the love he has for his own family, as the pride he holds for a man who is not his son. “And Donna. They would be so proud if they could see you.”

Soldiers don’t hug. So they drink their cold tea and share memories. Wilf tells Jenny all he knows about her father. It’s a pittance, but she hangs on every word. Then he tells her about Donna, about her new life as a married woman, about her old life as a temp, about her childhood, and about the day she saved the universe.

Together they mourn.

 

*

 

Jenny can’t stay.

Wilf asks her to, but she cannot. And he understands: It is in her blood to travel, just as it was in her father’s.

“He might still be alive,” Wilf tells her. “He might have only… changed. I don't pretend to understand it. I'm just too human I guess, for everything out there. Still, if he did, you could still find him.”

“It wouldn’t be right,” she says. “If he’s a new man. He needs to make a new future, free from the past. And so do I.”

Jenny salutes him before she leaves. Him, the man who killed her father. She vanishes into the night, turning a corner, out of sight, gone. Wilfred lowers his own salute, knowing that he will not see her again.

There is a bright flash in the sky, a bare second of dimension splitting light. No sound. But Wilfred knows it is her ship leaving.

He thinks that the Time Lords are a bloody stupid lot on the whole: fighting their wars, trampling their enemies, giving up their lives for foolish old sods with more behind them than ahead. He traces the dots between the winter constellations and wonders how long it will take Jenny to come to her senses.

She must already know, surely, how hard it is to build a future without a past.

 

_fin_  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=35305>


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